


The Mind of Moriarty

by LelianaVance (orphan_account)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, Supernatural
Genre: 221B Baker Street, Abbadon, Anal Sex, Angels, Black Smoke, Blood and Gore, Bloodplay, Boring, Cain - Freeform, Canon Divergence, Consulting Criminal, Contract, Dark Sebastian, Demon Moriarty, Demon Sex, Demonlock, Doppelganger, Fallen Angels, Filth, First Kiss, First Meeting, First Time, Hell, His Last Bow, Honey you should see me in a crown, Hunters & Hunting, Internal, Irish Keep, King Moriarty, Knight(s) of Hell, London, M/M, Masturbation, Mind Palace, Moriarty Is A Dick, Moriarty Lives, Moriarty is Dead, Moriarty's POV, Oral Sex, POV Sebastian Moran, Pain, Past Torture, Porn, Porn With Plot, Possession, Possessive Sebastian, Post Reichenbach, Reichenbach-Related, SEBASTIAN - Freeform, Scars, Seb - Freeform, Sherlock AU, Six Feet Under - Freeform, Supernatural AU - Freeform, Supernatural Elements, Tattoos, The Fall - Freeform, The Final Problem, The Roof, Tigers, Unhealthy Relationships, Vessels, Westwood, Winchesters - Freeform, basher, colonel - Freeform, crowley - Freeform, demon, demonplay, distressing scenes, dont be like him, explicit - Freeform, hellish instruments, jim is real, long live moriarty, meat-suit, mor, moran inside moriarty, moriarty's mind, moriaty's mind, mormor, most dangerous men in london, rifle, superlock, the second most dangerous man in london
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-19 23:21:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3628071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/LelianaVance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mormor's first meeting!<br/>Moriarty and Sherlock are dead. The black smoke watched it all, waiting, waiting for the right moment to possess the stronger of the two but the demon Moran will have some fighting to do if he wants this meat-suit. Jim Moriarty isn't done with it. A battle begins inside his chaotic and distorted mind, both the past and the future playing out in new wonderful ways.<br/>Can two ever become one?</p><p>Sherlock/Supernatural crossover!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Internal Demons

The man on the roof was sprawled, a gun in his left hand and the back of his head a pulpy mess leaking and leaking. The other one, the moving one, jumped, his coat flapping about him like a pair of useless wings as he plummeted. He fell hard and fast, a satisfying crunch the final footnote of his existence. The black smoke watched all of this in complete absorption. Deliberation. It didn’t choose to trace the path of the jumper but remained aloft in the clouds as it was, watching, watching the man on the roof. He took death like these humans take tea; right from the pot. It hadn’t expected to find them during a final conflict, but it was easier this way. Less prone to rejection. Both were dead but this one attracted it, oozed alluring malevolence. A preternatural wind took the smoke closer to the body of Jim Moriarty.

Arcing its gaseous flight pattern, it forced itself upon him, a bending column of black smoke shooting up his mouth and disappearing entirely. For a time the Westwood-suited body was still, stiff and unresponsive. Then it shook; vibrated uncontrollably as the smoke filled him from within, turning vacant eyes full-black. Appendages flexed, tensed and moved once more as the intruder imposed it’s will upon the lifeless meat-suit. It sat up, its new head lolling to the side, a half-smile playing upon a dead face. Getting back to impossibly steady feet, it looked up into the sky and…

'No, Daddy isn’t finished yet!' The Black Smoke-infused body fell to its knees, a small tangible cry of smoke escaping cool lips. In quick succession thin trails of its existence was forced out of ear-, mouth- and nose-holes, the hands clamped about his mouth only doing so much to prevent the expulsion. Mind fought Body. Jim was laughing, his maniacal timbre resounding around in his vast mind; an amphitheatre made up of chaotic performances with no audience. Increment by increment, Jim succeeded in fighting back the dogged black miasma that threatened to tear his consciousness apart a single thought at a time. Black air-snakes swam through the air, hanging weightlessly for a fraction of a second before the London skyline before disappearing completely. The parts failing to thrive without the whole.

He was in the Tower of London, The Pool and on the Roof simultaneously, three exquisitely melodramatic performances intertwined all around him. He walked in flash-steps about the wispy stage, distance not a tangible thing in his chaotic mind. Beethoven the soundtrack of his madness. He blew wet raspberries at two Sherlocks, rolled his eyes at a single John and blew kisses to three illustrious Moriartys. Each performance masterful, with a finite running time and, in his opinion, unforgettable final acts. He smiled, nodding emphatically at his three other selves. Then stopped still as all their eyes turned black and his well-maintained script was left scattered to the non-existent wind, predetermined words unvoiced. The actors turned on him; one Sherlock with a gun, one without and a single John Watson strapped in explosives.

“Oh look at him! Doesn’t he look gorgeous with a little darkness in him and his John, well, if there was ever a dog to a bone. I really must get myself one.” He stepped forwards, undeterred by the shift in the act, his voice serious now. “I liked it better my way. So sorry but Daddy wants his body back.”

The Pool-Sherlock shot at him. Missed. Jim was firmly in his sights one second and then, like a Super 8 film missing a frame, gone the next. Staccato laughter following in his wake. The faux-Sherlocks, Moriartys and John contorting their heads the full 360 degrees to try and locate him. 

‘Do you know where you are doofus? Do you know who I am? THIS IS MY MIND. No access, no public tours. Now if you please,’ Jim materialised before them again, the smoke from the pistol manipulated into a frown before his face. ‘The exit is here, here, here and HERE! So sorry this story already has a hero.’

The cloud-like landscape of pool, tower and roof merged into a complete splash of everything and nothing; all blurs and ripples. Jim spun around on an empty stage, hands outstretched as the blackness rose higher and higher. Stopped. Hung over him. 

‘Did you not hear me? I don’t like to repeat myself. It’s boring, wasteful.’ Jim said, halting his pirouette and staring upwards into the dark boughs of his own mind currently clouded over with the intruding smoke.

‘I’m not leaving Jim.’ A strangely masculine voice purred. ‘Not without a suit.’

‘I’d recommend Westwood.’ Jim shouted back, a dry smile on his face. ‘I’ve got a card I think.’ He began searching himself, couldn't find it and shrugged pushing out his lower lip. 'Oh no. Sorry I must've left it at Court.'

It was like staring into a conscious maelstrom, a living blackness with no discernible core. It was so blasé. Had been done too many times in too many variations. He was a little disappointed. 

‘Unfortunately that’s not the kind that I feel comfortable in.’ The cat-like voice stated. ‘Not my size.’

Jim cracked a smile at this. Not a Sherlock smile but a small, not-bad kind. 

‘I’ve been looking for you for a long time. Not many skins can contain me. The other one killed himself.’

‘Sherlock?’ Jim cried aloud delighted, bouncing up and down. ‘And they lived happily ever after!’ 

The smoke coiled back down towards the stage, first a black nothingness and then a man-like shadow, then a rippling Sherlock. Jim clapped at this, his head ever so slightly to the side as he studied the new body of the performer. He pointed giddily at the billowing coat that seamlessly joined to his black body and the defined yet wavering cheekbones, grinning as he did.

‘That’s a great trick. But he was dull. Not the man I thought he was. One of them. GET OUT!’ Jim lunged at the shadow, fists passing through nothing, the body pulling apart and reforming around his blow. 

‘You can’t expel me Jim,’ The smoke said, ‘You’re dead. Little more than entrails at the bottom of a barrel, I’ll rub you raw. This is mine now.’

‘All very dramatic but I’ve other things to do, other problems to finalise. Off you go then.’

The Smoke-Sherlock swarmed through him, disappearing with the contact. ‘I’ve told you I am not going anywhere. You are dead. Your body is mine.’

‘Off you go then,’ Jim repeated in the dark. ‘Spill your secrets. Tell the big bad dragon who you are.’

Black vapours coalesced before him once more in the shape of Sherlock, this time with eyes as yellow as sin. It smiled and looked downwards. Smiled again. 

‘I’m the new host of Jim Moriarty’s mind and body. The new consulting criminal.’ Confident, goading; all very ordinary. 

Jim rolled his eyes, jigged on the spot. ‘No, come on…don’t be like him. Don’t be predictable.’

The smoke shifted, contours moving across the false face revealing new facial patterns, undecided and always in motion, flickering from the bland to the famous in seconds.

‘Crowley said you were a handful. He’s gone soft so I didn’t put much stock in it. Hell’s full of handfuls as you can imagine. But two names stretched down to the pits, two capable men with their own personal vices. You were the prize of a lot of infighting. A detective and a criminal. Holmes and Moriarty. I’d always preferred to have you. I’m not like him at all, the suit would’ve clashed the host. My name is Sebastian, Sebastian Moran, and I’m going to wear you James Moriarty. Wear you to all the balls.’


	2. Past Employment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moran and Moriarty continue to square off, this time with the former revealing a few of his gruesome past transgressions. Much to Jim's delight.

Jim stared into that black wind, rushing about above him, ran a hand through his raven-black hair. This was all wearing a little thin. Jim didn’t believe in monsters, not the unnatural kind, he believed in the human-monster, had all of their numbers. Still, there was something about all this that got set his heartbeat climbing beyond the norm. Something un-ordinary if not quite extraordinary. 

‘I don’t much care for balls. Quite the recluse, in fact. How about,’ He placed his hands over his mouth to muffle the words, ‘– and listen closely because this will be great – I get you a suit made for the lights, cameras and tabloids. A flashy one. Sequins and hair. Lots of hair. This one is in use.’

A yellow flash ran the length of the black smoke, crackling and forking off into the recesses of Jim’s body. It wasn’t a pain he had ever felt before. It was nothing and then everything; tendons, muscles, brain and skin being charged with a million volts. Invisible fireworks rippling throughout his entire being. Jim bowled over, coughing up air and resistance.  
Despite not being a physical body, his mind thought up the beads of sweat that ran down his face. Incorporeal secretions for an incorporeal pain. 

‘There is no negotiation. No second-coming. You are dead. I can see your brain you know, it’s not very pretty. More gore than matter. You are a fleeting mist in a maelstrom of me.’

‘Less of the clichéd monologuing, please.’ Jim replied, getting back to his feet and flashing a smile. ‘It makes my head hurt.’

The world around them changed; Jim willing a new background to their discussion. It was 221B and already had a version of himself carving into an apple as Sherlock droned on about blah blah something blah. It didn’t take the intruder long to infect the scene, make the players get up, move towards him, black-eyed and threatening. 

‘I think I’ll miss him. THAT HAIR, THAT COAT AND THAT NAME. Yours – what was it again? – oh yeah Moran. Moran, Moran, Moran. Is that why you are here? Did you run? Run from all the other monsters. To me.’

A reply wasn’t forthcoming, a strange silence pervading the scene; both doppelgangers locked mid-step. Jim sat down upon the couch, willed an apple into existence. Started to carve. 

‘Tell me Moran, you’re a coward aren’t you. The strange little boy who cried wolf.’ 

Still no answer.

A phone begins to ring. Jim jumps up, eyes wide and searching. ‘Now who in the world could that be? I didn’t think the dead got reception. Hello? I’m talking to him now…yes he is a frightful bore…a yellow-bellied cur? Now that is somethi-’

The smoke shot down, a column of nights sky manipulating itself into a shadowy figure. Impossibly tall, looming over him. No mouth, eyes or any facial features just rippling blackness. 

‘A coward? I am a Knight of Hell, Cain himself taught me. I have ended more lives than you have even touched mortal. You are amusing but you are wasting my time. I came for your body not your mind. This is over.’ His voice came from all round, permeating the air and the cells within his body. 

Jim suffocated then. Coils and coils of thick smoke entangling and wrapping itself around his whole being. The apple dropped from his hand, rolling and rolling until coming to a stop. He died for the second time with a smile of his face.

Looking out onto the busy streets of London, the smoke took its first fully controlled step. There were no incessant cries of torture here, just the rampant blare of mundanity. It moved on over towards the door that would lead it down and away from here. The doorknob wouldn’t budge.

‘Did I not say you were in MY head. I make the rules here.’

The roof disappeared and the grimy stage reasserted itself, Jim sitting cross-legged in the middle. The apple was back in his hands and being held aloft, a smiley face carved into its surface.

‘Show me what you’ve done Sebastian Moran. Show me the maniacal misdemeanours, get me excited. MAKE MY BLOOD FLOW.’

The smoke spun around him, settling into a canvas of black and pictures flashed across it. Ten thousand hooks tearing at a wailing man, the iron-links suspending him above spewing hellfire and monstrous hands that reached out towards him. A little girl in a steaming cauldron, her skin floating upon the surface. A cathedral full of nuns burnt to the ground, the bodies torn to shreds and left dripping from the cross. A British soldier regiment picked apart by a sniper; headshot after headshot after headshot. Blood and brain matter spraying against their comrades. An orphanage with a red floor. A nine foot long Bengal tiger tearing apart a trio of travellers, muscles rippling beneath an orange and black pelt. Businessmen from all over the world picked apart from hundreds of yards away. A score of angels burnt out from within, their grace expiring in a flash of blue. Body after body, trauma after trauma and Jim watched with glee. Hands getting sweaty, lips dry and constantly needing to be licked. A monster after his own heart.

‘Liked you resume. I’m hiring.’ He got back to his feet, opened himself up. ‘Like I said, I REALLY have been looking for someone like John Watson in my life. But when I said a live-in one this wasn’t what I was expecting. What say we find you a DIFFERENT body and we make art.’


	3. Candidates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moriarty takes Moran into the recesses of his mind to show him a few possible bodies to possess.

Jim moves through his body like wind through a keyhole, whistling past mundane mechanisms to the treasures beyond. He sails past memories of Ireland and doting, suffocating parents. Of a five-bedroom house and a well-manicured garden full of rhododendrons and azaleas, of a long dining table and a train of house staff, of a bough in a tree, dark and full of the bodies of rats, birds, dogs and the first resting place of Carl Powers’ trainers. On and on, history swam about him as he sought the source of what was him, the well that harboured the web of secrets he was the spider of. 

He stopped, his body floating before a large safe. Old, thick as a castle’s wall. No discernible entry-point. The smoky Sherlock settled down beside him. 

‘You’re a child-killer.’ Moran stated, the words hanging in the air, delectable and full of sin. ‘What did he do?’

Jim continued on towards the safe, his hands reaching out for its cool surface. He spoke over his shoulder. ‘Dared to laugh.’

The silver surface pulsed, fluctuated under his touch, the solidarity fading in seconds. A set of stairs led downwards. Jim swivelled, his face all serious, a little scared. ‘Don’t let them touch you. They bite! Nom. Nom.’ He smiled, dropped onto the first step. 

Down and down they went, Moran suspiciously quiet. Jim had half a mind to inquire about the state of things downwards in the molten sulphur of Hell as one might remark upon the weather. The thought didn’t really amuse him enough. Real Hell, he thought, would be a blank nothingness, a white block with absolutely nobody to play with. Fire and brimstone was so obvious.

‘If this is all some elaborate attempt of banishing me, do not think it will work Jim.’ The black fog on his heels finally said as they hit the bottom step. Jim stopped, turned about him, stared where the eyes should have been. 

‘If I wanted to banish you,’ He said, his brow furrowing, ‘I would have done it the very first second you invaded, silly. Don’t overestimate yourself it won’t do much to your figure.’ Jim was resolute in his words, as if they were gospel, the words of God.

Moran, noticeably stricken retreated into himself, deliberating.

They stepped into a large ornate theatre, red and gold trimming running the length of the place. Crimson chairs descended as far as the eye could see, never quite reaching the bottom. A large screen dominated the place, vast and impossible to see in its entirety without having to move the head from corner to corner. Bodies hung from the rafters. Thousands upon thousands. Old. Young. Men. Women. Each one left to dangle like a Christmas ornament.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Jim said as he jumped onto the nearest seat. ‘Sit, sit, sit. SIT.’ 

Moran slowly acceded, floating to a seat beside him as the white screen flickered into life with a resounding boom and a flash of smoke. 

‘I know, I know. Overly dramatic. But it’s in my head. I wouldn’t do something so boring out there where it matters. This is just for you. FLAIR and FLAMBOYANCY!’

‘What is this? Why have you brought me here?’ Moran barked, tendrils of smoke flicking out at Jim’s face. He didn’t budge. Laughed.

‘Why? To see the gallery of course.’ And with that, the body nearest to them was pulled into the rafters and impossibly dropped to the stage in a heartbeat. A lifeless mess of skin. Behind it, the screen blared and played out her life and death.

‘Don’t remember her. Would you like a WOMAN? Do you like women? Have you ever…’ 

‘I am male.’ Moran intoned, bottling up the rage that threatened to rise from within. ‘No mere suit can hold me. You or Him. That was why I arrived. No other.’

The body disappeared and another took its place. A young man, short black hair and skinny as a rake was tossed to the floor of the stage. On the screen, crack-dens and the seedy underbelly of London played out in all its shadowy glory. The man, Harry Ashford as it said upon the upper right corner of the screen, was hunched beneath an arch lighting up as the bullet tore through his weedy skull. His eyes flung left and right searching groggily before staring up into a smoggy sky.

‘Saw something I didn’t want him to.’ Jim offered as the body was swooshed away, another larger one taking its place. 

Moran was unimpressed as they continued to circulate about him; the fat, the young and the disgusting. All reeking of ineptitude and failure. He made no comment as Jim orchestrated the ghoulish performance. He had been a Knight of Hell, a warrior of a million deaths not a boy who ran a Sunday paper round. The lightning crackled within him, small as not to stir Jim’s physical body.

Jim sighed. ‘Not an easy bride are you? A dress is just a dress, it’s what you do with it that matters.’ He grabbed at his face, groaned, kicked out his feet. ‘So FUSSY! Ughhh…how about…’

No body dropped this time. Instead, the screen lit up and showed a pre-recorded CCTV feed of a man in a disused apartment, lighting up a fag. He was wearing little more than a stained vest and tight black trousers. Scarred and tattooed beyond measure. Jim felt the spikes of interest lashing out from Moran’s gaseous existence. He smiled a little, remembering the fellow. The man moved, approaching a window and a long black rifle that sat upon its sill. As he arched his back both Moriarty felt a little sting of remembrance, of time spent in Milan and Milwaukee. This would be perfect, he thought smiling inwardly an irresistible hook. 

A large prominent scar ran horizontally along his nose and vertically down his right eye, distinguishing and strangely alluring. As the man returned to the corner, slipping down onto the floor to finish up his fag he raised a middle finger to the camera. 

Moran, captured by him from the start, daringly looked towards the corner to find a name but only found a question mark.

‘He doesn’t exist,’ Jim explained when Moran inquired, ‘He's a figment of my reality. I MADE HIM UP.’ He laughed and laughed, failing to get a hold of himself. ‘BUT…we can make him.’ Jim smiled again as the shadow-Sherlock nodded, an old fantasy of his slowly coming to roost.

‘How?’ Moran asked sometime later after the false-footage looped. ‘Man cannot make man.’

‘I CAN. I can do whatever I like. Whatever I WANT.’

The screen changed, a thousand pinpoints flickering upon a world map. Each one flashing obnoxiously. 

‘A hundred candidates.’ Jim stated standing up. ‘Go.’

Moran flew upwards to face him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘GOGOGOGOGOGO!’ Jim bellowed. ‘FIND HIM. Make him.’

The smoke coiled about him once more, large and threatening. 

‘It is not a trick. Those are the last known locations of possible HIMS. I’ve been dead a while so they may have danced round a bit but…go and see. Cut and ink, possess and play, come work for Moriarty!’

The smoke left him then, left him cold and alone as the thing most holding him together left in a column of black. 

Icy, bitter, raw like up north, like the arctic. SO very COLD.


	4. Curriculum Vitae/ Resume

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moran locates his true body but does it want him?

Sebastian Moran flew through a rainy London sky, Bethnal Green-bound. Not subject to the weak mind of Man nor prone to forgetfulness, he had total recollection of every single blips location on the world map Moriarty had shown him: five in Britain, twenty-nine in the United States, two in Brazil, thirty-six in Gibraltar, nineteen in Mexico, eight in Ecaudor and one in Afghanistan. It was likely Jim was lying; Sebastian had been in his body long enough to know that was not outside the realms of possibility, more a surety of it. In all likelihood there was only around ten or so actual candidates and even many of them red herrings. He would seek out the most local and mutilate without prejudice to get what he wanted, hoping that the skin could contain him.

Moriarty had, if not persuaded him, intrigued him. If Moran could not be him, then he would have him. Have him close to him, watch him until he was close to deaths door once more, his consciousness fractured beyond all repair and resistance. Then he would take him like he had taken countless souls and pull all his strings. The cool British wind tore at his gaseous existence, rippling and billowing at the black arrow he made dart through the air. He stopped above a nondescript house amongst hundreds. Green door and smoking chimney. Too easy.

Moran squeezed into the chimney stack and shot through into a well-lit front room, a family of three staring wide-eyed at him hovering before them. Two kids. One man. Dark haired and fat. Before they could scream he rushed at them, malleable around their skin. Moran tore about the room in a black-flash, tearing apart the household in seconds and studying every little family photo that adorned the place. No blond man. 

He left them screeching, shaking and on the teetering edge of sanity, pushing his body through the jamb of the front door. A staccato of lightning rippled throughout his black coils as he zipped upwards into the sky once more. Moriarty was playing for time. 

Sebastian would give him very little. 

The other four blips in Britain were hoaxes and his patience was wearing thin when he slammed through an indeterminable amount of earth, core and fire as he burrowed his way back into Hell. World-journeying was swifter here; ten miles could be traversed in a second, continents in a day. Moran’s form shot past pulsating acres of bodies pressed against bodies caged both in head and penis clamps, wails of the dangling prostitutes and their flayed outstretched fingers, and thousands upon thousands of timeless and infinite infighting of a million demonic clans. Each vying for the smallest of footholds above the over. Eyes both damned and intrigued followed his hasty passage. Fire licked at his gaseous form - Moran decided not to hamper his progress by morphing back into his true form – simultaneously pleasurable and torturous. Lucifer’s love.

Exits and entrances from Hell had always been guarded but the recent pandemonium caused by the widespread fallen Angels had made security lax. Sebastian slammed back up through tectonic plates and the earth’s mantle into a black sky. A New York sky. Moriarty, he decreed, would not see the satisfaction of having sent him to another. If he found no such candidate here, he would tear Jim apart from the inside. Scouring every last cell of his being and inserting himself into each nook and cranny until Jim’s limbs moved to Moran’s tune.

The next blip he sought was in Queens. He wore the next body, his essence too much for the false candidate. A black man rather than the white-blond that had so captured him but with those tattoos and scars he so enjoyed. The man’s skin burned from the inside, sizzled in seconds and fell onto the floor in a mushy mess. Moran took great delight in watching the man’s family return, grinning at the horror and panic that took them. They prayed and asked the almighty for aid but the black-eyed man who was once their kin blocked the door, exploded from the inside and plastered them with his leftovers. Moran moved on.

Four more distractions and then something promising. A dank, dilapidated warehouse on the seafront. The sea frothed against forgotten or labouring ships in the bay, the clouds above promised rain. Delicious gunshots then punctured the still air, spurring Moran onwards, the sound exciting; the violence Man capable of always delectable to him. Weak meat-things all, but with a passion for anger and pain only similar to his own kind. Gulls cawed and shot downward in his wake, colliding with the pavement in red splats.

He passed into the cavernous building through a jagged window, dust motes dancing all around him. Few rays pierced the darkness but Moran spotted him all the same. He was sitting at a rusty old metal table, a deck of cards and a stack of bullets littering its surface. A drooping cigarette hung from his bottom lip, the ember all but extinguished. The body didn’t need to be made, it already existed. Scars and ink. The Nameless one was bare-chested and Moran fizzled with excitement at the further scarring revealed because of this. Long and savage slashes across his back and midriff, across his shoulder and nape. And all that ink. It was him alright, that horizontal scar running across that nose he had seen in Moriarty’s theatre, that same vertical one cutting down his right eye and the same tattooed tally chart running along both his inner forearms. A kill-list. Circling about him in silence Moran caught sight of the tiger on his back and remembered, remembered why this man so caught his eye.

‘You’re him huh?’ The man suddenly said as he lit up another cigarette. Moran fell silent, was sure he had not been seen. 

‘I’ve felt you before. Back when I hunted.’ He smiled as he looked up into the darkness and the odd black fog that hung there. ‘It’s funny. The locals always said death stalked their jungles; an orange demon with black eyes and claws like daggers. How right they were, huh?’

Moran remembered the feel of it now, the tearing of his flesh, the taste of him and the bullet wound that had killed his four-legged suit. He floated down into the dim light that shone down upon the man, making himself a black-cloud jaguar as he did. For a moment nobody said anything, they both just started at one another; blue eyes staring at all-black ones.

Then the man got up, walked straight past Moran’s animal form to the far window, a rifle was hung from the sill. He peered through it, smiled and pulled the trigger. The retort was like a thunderclap over their heads. The silence that fell afterwards was almost palpable, the air disturbed so fiercely now left to rot. The man strode back over, satisfied with his aim and just simply began to take apart the rifle and put the pieces on the table. Somewhere out there in the bay a body slumped with a hole through its brain.

‘Not much use for one as you.’ He remarked as he put the pieces into a case and slid it back under the table, rested his feet upon it. 

‘Do you know what it is that I am nameless one?’ Moran finally said, his body morphing into a humanoid shadow. 

‘Colonel.’ He corrected as he crushed the fag-end into the table. ‘My call-sign. Have you come to finish me off? Take my head instead of my skin?’ 

Moran laughed aloud, the sound like grating steel. ‘I’ve come, Colonel, to wear your skin.’ 

The Colonel got back to his feet and came to stand right before Moran and smiled. 

‘The predator needs his prey, huh? Don’t I have to accept such a thing? I can’t say the thought of you inside me is a pleasing one.’

Stray trails of smoke wrapped about his thick neck, squeezed and squeezed. ‘The demon gets whatsoever he desires. Accepting is only a choice you can make if you’re still breathing.’

Half-choking, the Colonel reached down into his sock and pulled out a knife and began cutting at his attacker, slicing air and nothing. ‘Supposing I accept. That must have some benefit to you?’

Moran eased the pressure. ‘It does. Symbiosis is a fine thing but I don’t like to share. If you let me in, your body is mine. Your mind, mine.’

The Colonel sighed. ‘Can I have one last cigarette?’ He reached out to the table.

‘No.’

He smiled, nodded. ‘Then please, come on in.’ 

Moran’s passage was far swifter and easier than his forceful entry into Jim. The Colonel’s body opened itself to him, allowed him to fill it up from the inside and plant itself onto living cells and run amok in pulsing neural networks. Moran flexed and the Colonel’s fingers obeyed, he smiled and the Colonel’s face complied and he then took a step forward and the Colonel’s legs responded in kind. But when he tried to speak it was not his words that fell from these dry lips.

‘Easier than I thought to trap a demon.’ The hand grabbed the box of cigarettes on the table, lit one up despite Moran’s strongest attempts to stop this. ‘Met a few ramblers over the last couple of years. Asylum dodgers. Winchesters, I think. Contract saw me put in their path. We didn’t get on. The younger of the two too mushy. Didn’t have what it takes to kill in cold-blood. Needless to say things went south. Shifter, they called it. To make a long story short, I scratched their back they scratched mine. Seems like their father had been chasing the orange devil a long time back.’ 

Moran fought, fought and fought some more but something held him. A demon-trap. He flared and spiked, shot and stabbed but the etched and inscribed rib-cage held him.

The Colonel laughed, stepped towards the jagged window from which Moran had entered. Sheets of rainfall slammed against the untrodden pavement, stray cats ran for shelter. 

‘You were talking about symbiosis earlier, right?’


	5. Elevation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim sets about reclaiming his body before the demon can return. But is he strong enough and does he really want it?

It was a lie of course. All but one of those blips on the map had been a construct of his mind. Moran would work that out quickly as well, Jim had little time. That man really did exist and if Moran genuinely wanted the vessel he would have to spend a great deal of time seeking him out; infatuated by his appearance as Moran seemed to be. Jim would have control then, his body would be his own once more. He was nobody’s puppet.

He meant it though. If this Moran took the body of the Colonel, Jim would welcome him as an associate of sorts. Hand him a gun and point him where he pleased. Together they would paint the cobbles of London red, together they would bring London to its knees, together crime would be theirs alone to govern. A criminal consultant and his live-in man.

Still, it would be difficult to kick-start his body before Moran got back and simply took control of it. Jim was weaker than he had made out. Each obstacle he had constructed to slow down and sway Moran had taken a lot out of him. He flew despite all this as fast as his mind would allow, his destination the Irish Keep that housed his mind proper. It would be hollow, vacant and crumbling but he would take it, mould it back to the majesty it once was.

Three hours. That’s what he assumed he would have. Three hours to make Daddy shine.

Each mental exertion was like another bullet through his head. Lifting an old stone brick up from oblivion and settling it down into some semblance of coherence was a task far harder than he thought possible. The walls he had built thus far were loose. Mortar didn’t hold this place together, rather a fluid-like membrane of memory. A childhood spatter. An unwanted gift. An insufferable holiday to the Bahamas. Brick by brick, Jim raised the Keep. His mind wishy-washy, off-kilter as if the thoughts were escaping him or his body was being tossed to and fro. He felt like a seaman without his sea-legs. Behind the bricks lay a moat of schemes, plans and secrets. A roiling mess of black sin. It flowed without much prodding, the well deep and undrainable. Not even the damage to his brain could pierce those murky waters. Like Sherlock and his cheekbones, Jim and this moat were inseparable, part of him. Jim breathed it in, the toxicity both alleviating and refreshing. 

He built some more. Wall after wall. Tower after tower. Before long the Irish Keep had a skeleton.

Jim’s progress slowed after a time, his movements freezing over. It was cold. Each exertion now came with a startling stab of sleet. Brain freeze. 

One hour, he estimated. One hour until Moran’s return and he was nowhere near complete. Rooms were bare, surface thoughts left drifting in the black abyss of his body. Ungraspable. Hallways were left without furnishing, galleries without paintings and halls without grand banqueted tables. A thousand errant thoughts coursed through the empty veins of his body, settling forgotten on dead skin cells and he needed every one of them. No matter how inconsequential. 

Jim’s Keep, that mantle of his true self, lay half-complete in a swirling cloud of darkness. Unfinished walls gaping maws. He dropped to a nearby stone, mental capacity at its peak. He tried to shout and fight, scream and battle but he was little more than a whisper on the wind. He fell, fell through phantom stones into black-milk. 

*

A raucous jostling started him awake. 

The Keep was a dwindling grey star in the black above, a twinkling vestige of what was left of him slowly, slowly falling away from him. The Big Bad had been toppled, his mighty castle a wreck in the culminating battle between the Hero and the Villain. Maybe it was better this way. Moran would only ever turn out to be a disappointment, an ordinary. A Sherlock. The big plans, the ones that had been mere embers during his games with Sherlock, were they really worth finishing? London. The World. 

Jim smiled. Laughed. Shouted nonsensically. It would be remiss of the Winner to leave the board whilst players still sat at the game-board. Hell? Couldn’t give a care. Lowly drop-outs. He had already slain the one who fought on the side of the angels, it was boring and not at all as fantastical as he had hoped. Reality bested fantasy in all occasions. He was the real demon, the devil in a suit, the Westwood clad King. And King’s needed to be pried from the throne and his fingers still clung on…

The absent thoughts fluttered, tensed and were sucked back up, back into bare rooms and forgotten dungeons. Flags rippled in the non-existent wind, the black waters of the moat frothed and splashed onto grey stone. A grand complete Keep sat atop nothingness, a King in its throne room. 

The dripping window into the world above was clogged with ambition and hunger, sealed and made whole and Jim Moriarty’s body twitched. Twitched again. Twitched a third time. 

Arms and feet juddered, colliding with something hard and close. Eyes opened onto a black blacker than black. Lungs rasped for oxygen that was not there. Fingers scraped upon something soft and hard. Jim couldn’t move. He was enclosed on all sides. He laughed despite it all. A cruel joke. 

‘Oh this really is a fairy tale…’ A loud thud cut him short, left him silent as he listened to the rhythmic pounding from above. Thud, thud, thud. Bang. Something hard and heavy falling onto the box. 

‘Jim Moriarty is dead,’ He said with a grin as the coffin door was wrenched open. ‘Long live Jim Moriarty.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little shorter than the others but the next chapter is where it finally ramps up.
> 
> Not sure how much more there will be but there will definitely be a few more if it proves to be popular.

**Author's Note:**

> Experimental piece that will have some interesting developments (filth) so please comment and let me know what works and what doesn't :) thanks


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